An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Gov­ern­ment will al­lo­cate an ad­di­tion­al $15 mil­lion for road re­pairs across Trinidad and To­ba­go as part of its con­tin­ued in­vest­ment in the Na­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and Restora­tion of Roads Pro­gramme.

Re­veal­ing this dur­ing the de­liv­ery of the 2027 fis­cal pack­age yes­ter­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo said the in­vest­ments in the road net­work would be an im­prove­ment from the lega­cy left be­hind by the “Pot­hole Na­tion­al Move­ment.”

He ac­cused the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion of sab­o­tag­ing the high­way pro­gramme.

“For ten years, the PNM could not even fix the crack in the Creek,” Tan­coo said, boast­ing, “We have fixed it.”

He added, “The high­way to Point Fortin, Fyz­abad and San Fran­cique aban­doned. The high­ways to Princes Town and Ma­yaro dis­card­ed.
We will fix it.”

Dur­ing fis­cal 2026, the High­ways Di­vi­sion re­paired 7,800 pot­holes and over 1,000 de­fects as­so­ci­at­ed with work car­ried out by the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and 752 road de­pres­sions.

Tan­coo said, “Our ap­proach re­flects a clear and sus­tained com­mit­ment to main­tain what we have, com­plete what was start­ed, re­pair what has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed and in­vest strate­gi­cal­ly in the in­fra­struc­ture our coun­try will need for the fu­ture.”

The Min­istry of In­fra­struc­ture has been al­lo­cat­ed $2.081 bil­lion in the 2027 fis­cal pack­age.

Cit­ing the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print, which was launched in No­vem­ber 2025 by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar as this coun­try’s largest in­fra­struc­tur­al un­der­tak­ing, Tan­coo said it sought to bring to­geth­er a sin­gle phased im­ple­men­ta­tion pro­gramme to con­vert na­tion­al as­sets and un­der-utilised spaces in­to pro­duc­tive cen­tres of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, pub­lic ser­vice and com­mu­ni­ty life.

Claim­ing em­ploy­ment un­der this pro­gramme was pro­ject­ed to av­er­age close to 51,000 jobs an­nu­al­ly, ris­ing to a peak of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 72,000 jobs in 202, he as­sured, “Op­por­tu­ni­ties for en­gi­neers, trades­men, struc­tur­al steel work­ers, road pavers and trans­port providers will be­come avail­able.”

Tan­coo said Gov­ern­ment would build on the ef­forts of the past year to im­prove the safe­ty of the trav­el­ling pub­lic, which in­clud­ed mod­ernised mea­sures.

He said road fa­tal­i­ties had de­clined by 31 per cent, whilst se­ri­ous in­juries had plum­met­ed by 35 per cent, and mi­nor in­juries by 33 per cent.